Uber is investing hundreds of millions of dollars in Nuro and Lucid, the latest step in the company’s plan to build an extensive robotaxi program that can roll out globally. Uber’s partnership with EV manufacturer Lucid will see it deploy at least 20,000 of the Newark-based company’s vehicles over a period of six years. These will be equipped with the AI-powered Nuro Driver autonomous technology. The vehicles will be owned and operated by Uber or one of its third-party partners, and the service will be exclusive to Uber users.
The robotaxi service is expected to launch in late 2026 in an unnamed "major US city," and Uber said that a prototype of an operational autonomous Lucid-Nuro vehicle is currently being tested on a closed circuit at a Nuro facility in Las Vegas. According to the new partners, the robotaxi will benefit from the Lucid Gravity SUV’s "advanced technology platform, redundant electrical and controls architectures, and long range," with the latter estimated to be around 450 miles.
Nuro will be responsible for overseeing the extensive safety checks. These range from simulations to on-road testing and are marked on "dozens" of categories. The approved Lucid Gravity robotaxi will operate at level 4 autonomy, which essentially makes it almost fully self-driving and able to perform the majority of its functions without any human intervention.
Uber has spent much of this year expanding its robotaxi ambitions through various team-ups with the likes of Volkswagen and British AI company Wayve, with whom it plans to bring robotaxis to the UK for the first time next year. Back in March, Uber launched its robotaxi service with Waymo in Austin, building on the existing offering in Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Waymo One covers 37 square miles of the city, and Uber users can ride in one by ordering an UberX, Uber Green, Uber Comfort or Uber Comfort Electric.
Earlier this week, Uber also announced a new partnership with China-based Baidu, which will see the two companies bring Baidu’s Apollo Go autonomous vehicles to mainland China and other non-US (no surprise there) markets around the world.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/evs/ubers-latest-robotaxi-plan-involves-20000-lucid-evs-145943920.html?src=rss
